I love going to the art museum and perusing the galleries full of endless masterpieces. There are paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, installations, photography...the wonders are endless. Speaking of which, bodies are like that too, aren’t they? It’s hard for most of us (especially those who have struggled with an ED) to think about, but the truth is that we are each a wonderful work of art. Something that helped me realize this was a figure drawing class I took back in college.
It was during the height of my eating disorder, and this class was at night, so as I stood there ignoring my rumbling tummy and trying to summon the energy to stand upright, I was faced with a jarring dilemma. I was going to spend an entire semester drawing the nude body, and I had no idea how I was going to handle it. I think that in the moment it was just something to muddle through, but looking back on it, I’m truly grateful for that class and the perspective it gave me.
That’s because in this figure drawing class, I had to truly see the nude figure; I saw the rolls, wrinkles, scars, sags, droops, blemishes, body hair and all of those things that I was told were “imperfections.” At the beginning of the semester, my sketches resembled what I thought the model’s body should look like, how I assumed a person would want to see their body depicted.
However, my teacher kept instructing me to draw what I actually saw, not the preconceived notion that was in my head. I worried about what the model would think when they saw my sketch. Would they be offended that I drew a fat roll or a skin flap? Would they think that they looked too short or too wide or had disproportionate body parts? I worried that my shading would look make the model look messy and dirty.
It wasn’t until I separated my distorted perception of the human body that I could finally sketch what I saw: the deep valleys of the clavicle and the soft mound of the belly. I drew the slim bones that I saw in the model’s feet, as well as the thickness of their thighs. I began seeing the beauty in the curves and contours, the shadows and highlights, the smoothness and the roughness. In a way, their body looked so strong and powerful, yet it also held a fragile vulnerability. Over time, I started to see the figure less as a naked person and more as a piece of art to be studied.
Drawing this model, I thought they were beautiful. I didn’t see them in a sexual way at all. In fact, I thought they were even more lovely for embracing their body as the divine wonder that it was. It continues to amaze me how each and every one of us was expertly crafted just the way we should be, by a great creator. We were made to be a wide variety of sizes, shapes and colors. In this way, it’s downright impossible to call out one single body and deem it better than the others. Yes, some of us were born with broken or damaged bodies, but we need to trust that we were born just as we were intended to be.
I was reminded of this when we switched things up by drawing a new model. This one was also beautiful, but in a different way. There were new angles to explore, and roundness on other parts of the body. Hair cropped up in new areas and wrinkles in other places. The facial features were nowhere near the ones I sketched from the other model, but that didn’t diminish their beauty. The model was even missing one of her breasts (she was a breast cancer survivor) and she was still as lovely as could be.
The entire experience was one that I wouldn’t gain much insight from until I made it to ED recovery, but I hope my story can inspire someone to recognize the beauty in their own body and the bodies of others. Something that I like to remember is a quote that sums up our diverse beauty pretty well: “I’m not beautiful like you, I’m beautiful like me.”
Kaitlin Irwin is recovering from anorexia. She spent her college years struggling to hide her illness and hopes to use her love of creative expression to spread positivity and love to others.
